Zotero: Organizing Your Research

Zotero has two ways to quickly create fully formatted bibliographies with citations in your library.

• Drag-and-drop - simply select items in the center column and drag them into any text field.  Citations are formatted in your default output style.
• Right click  - highlight one or more references and then right-click to select “Create Bibliography from Selected Item(s)." Zotero will then prompt you to select a citation style for your bibliography format and create your bibliography either (1) as an RTF file; (2) as an HTML file; (3) as copied text, which you can save to your clipboard, paste, print, etc.

See more on creating bibliographies from Zotero.

Zotero comes with the most common bibliographic styles, but many more are available to download.

To install a Zotero style:

• Go to the Zotero Style Repository page in Firefox.
• Search for the name of the style you need.
• Click the Install link next to the style, then the Install button to confirm.

The new style will appear in Zotero's style lists.

Word processor plugins, including those for GoogleDocs, Microsoft Word, and OpenOffice/NeoOffice, create dynamic bibliographies: insert a new in-text citation in your manuscript, and the bibliography will be automatically updated to include the cited item. Correct the title of an item in your Zotero library and with a click of a button the change will be incorporated in your texts.

Zotero Word Plugin, Video by the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media.

Install Zotero for OpenOffice, Video by Daniel de Byl

Do you use a word processer that doesn't have a plugin?  Do you know the date of the your citation off the top of your head?  Is the plugin slowing you down?  Zoter's RTF Scan is the answer for you.  Put your work in a RTF document, write the citations yourself, and tell Zotero where you want the bibliography and have Zotero do the rest of the work for you.

More on RTF Scan from Zotero.